Driving in the world

You might want to stick to the buses for MK especially, since driving there means that you have to cross the Lagoon either by monorail or ferry. Now, if you'd like to experience this once, it's pretty neat, but it will eat up 15-30 minutes of your morning, depending on when you get there.

If you do take buses, especially for ADRs, be sure to give yourself plenty of time. They're efficient and reliable, but taking a bus still takes more time than driving, imo. I'd say plan to leave your departure point an hour before you need to be at your destination.

Generally, driving at WDW is easy, I find. Just stay alert to the signs, and you should be okay. It's very well marked, since people are coming from all over the world to visit

Courtney, my advice to you is do not drive in the parks, it is to darn crowded, leave the car in the parking lot and walk in the park. Sorry I could not resist it, BUT I did slap myself across the hand for typing that. Now seriously I have flown in and used Magical express and went without a car and other times I have rented a car. The only time I use the rental is when I want to go off property to eat or like in your case go to Uni. Studios. I NEVER use the rental car when going to any destination on Disney property whether it be to the parks, other resorts or DTD. In those cases I use Disney transportation exclusively. I should say too that Disney transportation starts early enough in the AM that you can get to any pre-opening adr's using their modes of transportation whether it be buses, boats, or monorail.

I'm glad you asked this. We are doing the same thing when we go and I wondered about driving on property... =) When is your trip again?

I am not a big fan of the buses, but I can definitely see the advantage of them for getting into the parks, particularly the Magic Kingdom. It's the leaving that makes me want to drive more than anything. While we usually leave at non-peak times, the sight of the lines for the crowded buses always leaves me less than excited about the idea of the bus.

I'm probably in the minority, but we do drive everywhere. IT just took one bad bus experience the first year to swear off taking them again.

At the end of the day when we leave the park, we actually enjoy walking back to our car and talking about the day and fun things we did, and maybe even hold hands if we can get away with it

We bypass the trams in favor of the carefree walk. To us that's alot more relaxing than trying to cram ourselves on a packed bus.

I've stayed at Pop my last two trips and used the buses. I don't think I've waited more than 20 minutes for a bus going to the parks. I agree with Brad that the lines at closing are crazy but the buses are constantly running, so the wait really isn't that bad.

One night we had a later ADR at MK. The park was closed by the time we were done eating dinner. The bus stop at MK is #17. We had to get in line by #13. We waited about 45 minutes. While one bus was loading another one showed up, so line was always moving and so the time went by fast.

The buses start early for the preopening ADRs. I've read they start running an hour before the earliest reservation.

Pop doesn't share a bus with other resorts and you are going at a less busy time so you should be ok with using the buses. You'll be there after the marathon. The following weekend is a holiday weekend so you'll see a jump in the crowd levels.

We drive everywhere also. Never did the bus thing, but I think driving is much quicker and definitely less crowded.

You are going to find benefits and negatives of both driving and bussing.

If you don't mind waiting then the buses are pretty good. We actually love the buses and wouldn't do anything else. I would definitely recommend buses for MK AND DTD. Parking there can get kind of crazy if you go during peak times..and those run right from resort to DTD. The line queues at the buses for POP are a bonus. It cuts down on the crazies cutting in line. The lines for POP coming back from the parks can be rather intimidating but I also believe POP runs more buses than any other resort. We left MK once at closing and the line for POP was all the way back to the exit gate of MK (I do not kid..we walked all the way there before we realized that was the line)...but we were literally only in line 15 minutes. Bus after bus after bus with POP on it kept coming. I've had a harder time with buses at OKW and POR than I ever had at POP.

After staying at both POR and PoFQ, I'd try to use the FQ buses and walk instead of the Riverside buses. Riverside buses can be fine, but when they go awry its a bummer. FQ buses seemed to run super smoothly, and you're always the first stop at pickup or drop off when you share.

From one silly Canadian who has booked during a holiday I was not aware of to another yes the lines can get long at holiday time and yes it can be crazy and even though we drive our own vehicle down we still park it at our resort and bus or boat it. We actually use the wait times to think about how we will spend our day or to just sit and enjoy our surroundings. We love watching those crazy little lizzards. If we have reservations somewhere we always time our leave time well ahead as there is always something to do once we get to the park.I remember once staying at All Star Music and there was a lot of line jumping to get on the bus (I mean it was crazy!!!) anyways my daughter and I didn't want to stand and the bus was packed. We decided to wait for the next bus. Wouldn't you know it just as that bus pulled away a totally empty one pulled up and us and another couple hopped on.